fruit, and you will find every one
a friend well worth knowing. Then you will wish to save them from fire
and the lumberman's axe, especially the rare and old _sequoias_.

OUR BIRDS

More than three hundred kinds of these dear feathered friends and
visitors live in California. Along the sea-shore, in the great valleys
and the mountain-forests and meadows, even in the dry, hot desert, the
birds, our shy and merry neighbors, are at home. In many parts of
the state they find sunshine and green trees the year round, and food
always at hand. Yet sparrows, robins, and woodpeckers will stay in the
snowed-in groves of the Sierras all winter, contentedly chirping or
singing in spite of the bitter cold.

If you know these wanderers of wood and field, these birds of sea and
shore, and their interesting habits, you will wish to protect them
from stone or gun, and their nests from the egg collector. You will
listen to the lark and linnet, and be glad that the happy songster
trilling such sweet notes is free to fly where he wishes, and is
not pining in a cage. And you, little girl, will not encourage the
destruction of these pretty creatures by wearing a sea-gull or part of
some dead bird on your hat.

To become better acquainted with birds, let us call them before us by
classes, beginning with our sea-birds and those round the bays and on
the coast. Some of these not only swim but dive in the salt waters,
and to this class of divers belong the grebe, loon, murre, and puffin.
They dive at the flash of a gun, and after what seems a long time,
come up far away from the spot the hunter aimed at. These birds
usually nest on bare, rocky cliffs near the ocean, or on islands like
the Farallones, and their large green eggs hatch out nestlings that
are ugly and awkward and helpless on land. But they ride the great
ocean-breakers, or dive into their clear depths easily and gracefully;
and as they live upon fish or small sea-creatures, the divers only
seek land to roost at night and to raise their young.

Next come the gulls, who belong to a class known as "long-winged
swimmers." They have strong wings and fly great distances, and with
their webbed feet swim well, too. Most of the sea-gulls are white with
a gray coat on their backs, but they look snowy-white as they fly. You
may see them walking about the wharves, or perching on roofs and piles
watching for food, and seeming very tame as they pick up bits of bread
or the refuse fl